The Coutts Diaries

Canadian historians and readers of a certain age will gobble up this backroom narrative of wheeling, dealing and politicking on Parliament Hill during eight years (and four elections) of Canada’s first Trudeau era.

Jim Coutts, born in rural Alberta in 1938, was principal secretary to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau from 1975 to 1981. In that role he guided the Liberal Party and its cabinet through turbulent issues that included the reviled National Energy Program, stratospheric inflation and interest rates, (12 per cent and 19 per cent respectively), constitutional wrangling, a Quebec sovereignty referendum, the rise and quick fall of Progressive Conservative Party leader Joe Clark, and the collapse of the PM’s marriage to Margaret Trudeau.

Graham has edited the diaries into a record of secret machinations

Political journalist Ron Graham, renowned for his memoirs of Jean Chr.tien and Pierre Trudeau, has edited 14 of Coutts’s diaries into a useful and insightful record of the secret machinations that drove the Trudeau-era Liberals’ priorities, planning and policies — all of which still resonate across the country. (Coutts’s archives at the University of Toronto were only opened to researchers in 2025, a dozen years after his death, but Graham was given early access.)

Along with insights into the whimsical nature of his procrastinating boss, Coutts writes of all-night poker games (with $12,000 wins and losses), Toronto lunches with business and political heavyweights, and personal ostracization in his native — and very conservative — Alberta.

The one piece missing from this fascinating book is a biographical glossary for readers unfamiliar with such important political surnames as Axworthy, Marchand, MacEachen, Sharp, Whelan and Turner, to name only a few.